Stepping on the sparsely piled snow, I arrived in front of my house gate. But…
“Huh? Why is Seongheon hyung’s car……”
“Woof woof─! Woof─!”
“Ddanji, it’s me. This house’s precious son.”
“Woof woof─!”
Ddanji recognizes me but seems to be acting like this on purpose. While petting Ddanji who came to greet me first, I pointlessly talked to a dog that couldn’t even understand what I was saying.
“Ddanji, when did that black car come in? Just now?”
“Woof!”
I was pointlessly crouching down and walking toward the house entrance when the door of that dark seal stone-like black vehicle opened with a click. Startled by the sound of the door closing with a thud, my bent waist straightened right up.
“Daeyoung.”
“……Uh, huh? Huh? Seongheon hyung?”
“Why are you only coming now? You said you were taking the bus earlier.”
“Ahaha. Haha……. Well, I got off in the middle to take care of some business for a bit…….”
“So that’s why you refused when I said I’d give you a ride?”
When hyung stood right in front of me, there was a refined fragrance. It was very similar to the smell of cosmetics you get on the first floor of a department store. So even though hyung was alone, it reminded me again of the woman he’d been with earlier.
“Oh, right. Hyung, but why did you come here?”
“Why do you think I came?”
Right now, Seongheon hyung was dressed all in black wearing a flight jacket, and he looked even more cocky than when he was wearing his padding. With both hands shoved into his pants pockets, chin tilted up looking down at me, I somehow felt like I was being interrogated.
‘This is the atmosphere when hyung seriously looks down on someone.’
The tiger tattoo I couldn’t even see flashed before my eyes.
Ddanji, not caring either way, circled around Seongheon hyung’s pant legs wagging his tail. He barks at me, his owner, but rolls over and acts cute for Seongheon hyung…… All that splitting my allowance to buy him treats was for nothing.
When I couldn’t answer and hesitated, Seongheon hyung took one step closer to me and bent his head down further.
The gaze I’d had to look up to meet just moments ago now filled my vision as I stared somewhere at the ground. After making eye contact with me, hyung slightly creased the corners of his eyes.
“Daeyoung.”
“Yeah?”
“Did I…… make a mistake yesterday?”
“Uh, um…… No.”
It wasn’t that hyung made a mistake, but that I misunderstood. I believed him when he said he’d buy me a computer, and readily accepted the precious ring thinking it was platinum……
“Hyung, don’t worry about the promises you made yesterday. I heard from the hyungs. That when you get drunk, you just give away this and that……”
“Those guys said that? So that’s why you returned the ring?”
“Yeah. They said it was something precious.”
“That’s right. That’s why I gave it to you.”
“Huh?”
While saying that, hyung took off the ring again to give it to me.
Maybe hyung felt sorry for taking back something he’d already given, but I wasn’t qualified to receive hyung’s precious belonging. I wrapped my hands around Seongheon hyung’s hand and shook my head, saying he didn’t need to go this far.
“No, hyung. I won’t accept this ring. It’s too much of a burden.”
“Daeyoung.”
“I did accept it readily because you said it was expensive…… But now that I know the meaning behind it, I can’t accept it even more.”
The more I refused, the more Seongheon hyung’s expression twisted. But since I didn’t know why hyung was acting this way, this situation just felt uncomfortable.
“Then, hyung. I’m going to go in now.”
“Wait, Daeyoung─”
Creak.
Just as Seongheon hyung reached out his hand to grab me, our house entrance door opened and Daesu hyung came out from inside chewing on a dried squid leg.
“Oh? You’re here? If you’re here, why don’t you come in instead of staying out here?”
Just as Seongheon hyung was about to say “Ah” and speak, I slipped inside through the open entrance door.
From what I could hear outside the entrance, it seemed like Seongheon hyung had come because he had business with Daesu hyung. Even by the time I went up to the second floor, the two were still continuously talking.
So once again, I concluded that Seongheon hyung had come not because of me, but because of Daesu hyung.
* * *
“Isn’t Daeyoung cute?”
“Here we go again.”
Every time Seongheon made that sound, Gangjin would dismiss it thinking “there he goes again.”
So Gangjin and Gam Seongheon were friends who had been born in the same neighborhood and been together since they were learning to talk. Their mothers were also close and raised them together, so they grew up like brothers, and Gangjin thought he knew everything there was to know about Seongheon.
One day during their ordinary days, Seongheon’s mother suddenly passed away from a chronic illness, and from that point on, Seongheon lost his smile.
So Gangjin tried to make Seongheon laugh even a little by memorizing joke compilation books sold at the terminal and talking to him, but it was useless. From Gangjin’s perspective, Seongheon was like a ship sinking day by day.
The Seongheon that Gangjin knew tried to control everything like a reigning king even among friends, and was cold-hearted enough not to care about others’ circumstances. But the problem was that it got worse after his mother passed away.
A year later, one day before summer vacation, Daesu and Daeyoung moved here. Since Daesu was the same age as them and their fathers were also close, they met and hung out together without reservation.
On the other hand, Daeyoung, who was three years younger, had many shortcomings for playing with them. The kid was nice but slow and clueless. Above all, Seongheon found such an existence very bothersome.
So when Daesu brought Daeyoung along, Gangjin thought Seongheon would thoroughly ignore him…… But surprisingly, even when Daesu went around leaving his younger brother behind, Seongheon took care of Daeyoung attentively.
Since Gangjin thought he knew every aspect of Seongheon, that kind of behavior was quite unfamiliar at first. But as the days they spent together grew longer, he could vaguely understand why Seongheon was fond of Daeyoung.
Daeyoung was particularly devoted only to Seongheon. Before, they had all set up dominoes together in Seongheon’s room as elementary school homework. Actually it wasn’t homework, it was something they made up to trick Daeyoung.
“I have to finish this by today and take a picture to send to the teacher. Otherwise I’ll get in trouble. So Daeyoung, you watch over it well.”
“Okay. Got it, hyung.”
Leaving behind only the brightly answering Daeyoung, Seongheon deliberately left the spot. Then he secretly activated the robot vacuum and guided it to go there.
Daeyoung, who was eight years old at the time, didn’t know how to turn off that robot vacuum, so when it approached the dominoes he just blocked it with his legs, and when it approached again he pushed it away with his tiny hands, working hard only to defend.
They hid and giggled while watching the robot vacuum continuously go near the dominoes, then went outside saying let’s play some soccer.
After having so much fun, they didn’t even realize that over two hours had already passed. Thinking he would have given up by now, they went in, and surprisingly the dominoes were intact.
But Daeyoung wasn’t intact. The kid must have had such a hard time that he was tapping the robot vacuum while covered in tears and snot.
“Hyuuung…… I blocked it all. Because it might fall over…… Huuuung.”
Unlike us who were chuckling, Seongheon said nothing and just froze in place staring at Daeyoung.
I still can’t forget Seongheon’s expression at that time. At first he was amazed, and after a bit he became gloomy like Daeyoung. Then at the end, he opened his eyes wide and kicked the robot vacuum with his foot.
“Gasp!”
“Hey!!”
“Hyuuung……?”
Fragments of the robot vacuum flew everywhere, and they hit the dominoes which went crashing down─
“Ah! That!!”
In the midst of it all, Daeyoung threw his body to block the falling dominoes, and in the process, his leg got cut somewhere on a fallen piece of debris and started bleeding.
“What should I do, they all fell……”
“Daeyoung, you’re bleeding!”
Even while injured, Daeyoung did his utmost to keep his promise with Seongheon, and watching that, Seongheon seemed to regret deceiving him.
But that regret didn’t last long. Because Daeyoung really had an exceptional reaction and held no grudges.
When Daeyoung was in elementary school, they teased him for the fun of his innocence; in middle school, they teased him for the fun of his naivety; and in high school, they couldn’t stop teasing him because it was a familiar pleasure.
They took turns planning the pranks, but there was a difference between Daesu and Seongheon’s plans. If Daesu’s plans were simply to make him suffer like putting him in a llama pen that spits, Seongheon’s seemed to want Daeyoung to do something for him in the process of deceiving him.
Most of the things Seongheon planned gave Daeyoung a bit of a sense of achievement separate from upsetting him. So even though Seongheon deceived him far more than Daesu did, Daeyoung trusted and followed Seongheon more than his own older brother.
Gangjin wondered why Seongheon continued these pranks, and it seemed like a kind of vicarious satisfaction. He had reasonable suspicions that maybe Seongheon was filling the void left by his mother with Daeyoung’s attention.
So Gangjin quietly watched it and participated in deceiving Daeyoung, but never led it.
“Let’s play rock-paper-scissors, and the two who lose will go to the store.”
When Gangjin was 13, they all slept over at Seongheon’s house.
Seongheon’s house was spacious and nice, but his father didn’t buy snacks for the house saying they were bad for health. There weren’t even common snacks, so they had no choice but to sneak out at night to buy some.
But that was a secondary purpose; the real purpose was to tease Daeyoung again. They planned to rig the rock-paper-scissors game and send Daeyoung out into the dark night.
Originally they were going to send him out alone, but since Daeyoung threw a fit saying he absolutely couldn’t do it, they agreed to pair up in twos.
And we strategically decided the people going out would be Daeyoung and Seongheon, and played rock-paper-scissors to eliminate Daeyoung first.
How was this possible? When playing rock-paper-scissors, Daeyoung always threw ‘rock’ first. So we all threw ‘paper’ first, and then when Seongheon threw rock, naturally those two who threw rock ended up going to the store.
While Daeyoung briefly went to the bathroom, we plotted.
“Gangjin and I will wear white blankets and wait in front of the ginseng field pavilion.”
“Got it. Come out when I flash the flashlight three times.”
“Okay.”
We could barely hold back our laughter, already anticipating how shocked and panicked Daeyoung would be.
